QUESTION TIME (COUNCIL)

Details

14 February 2001

Hudghton (Greens/EFA) - Mr President, thank you for allowing me to put a supplementary question on behalf of my colleague, Mr MacCormick, who is accompanying the Moderator of the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland on an official visit here to Parliament today. Mr President-in-Office, do you accept that this is a new and profoundly oppressive instance of the subordination of women and their seclusion into private life? For many years women in Afghanistan enjoyed a fully public existence, participating in the professions and in the world of work and dressing appropriately. Sometimes it is said that appeals to human rights involve imposing western values on non-western cultures. That is false, and this particular case in Afghanistan shows it to be so. Does the Council agree that what is needed is a restitution of women's human rights and of the fundamental respect that they are due? Surely more is needed than has been offered in the statement today.